Authored by Adam Morrow via The Epoch Times,

Moscow says its forces have destroyed a large munitions depot in Ukraine’s western city of Khmelnytskyi.

“One AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] ammunition depot has been destroyed close to Khmelnytskyi,” the Russian Defense Ministry stated in its daily briefing for May 14. Khmelnytskyi, the target of Russian strikes in February, is located roughly 170 miles southwest of Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Energy Ministry confirmed that a “massive” Russian barrage damaged an energy facility in the city in the early hours of May 13.

According to the ministry, the local power supply wasn’t affected by the strikes.

The city’s local military administration similarly reported that multiple drones had targeted “critical infrastructure.”

Khmelnytskyi’s mayor, Oleksandr Symchyshyn, said schools, residential buildings, and industrial facilities were damaged in what he described as a “terrorist attack.”

Speaking on the Telegram messaging app, Symchyshyn claimed that the Russian strikes had left a number of civilian residents injured.

On the same day, a Russian missile barrage destroyed a storage facility in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil, located just west of Khmelnytskyi.

Fallout Concerns

Following the strike in Khmelnytskyi, video footage began circulating on Russian social media accounts that purportedly shows CCTV footage of the blast. The footage shows a facility—the nature of which is unclear—being rocked by a massive explosion, sending an enormous fireball into the sky.

This is probably the biggest explosion of the entire Ukrainian war

The Khmelnytskyi depot must’ve had a massive amount of fuel/ammunition for it to have multiple big recurring explosions pic.twitter.com/rpigK3D4qV

— LogKa (@LogKa11) May 13, 2023

The Epoch Times couldn’t verify the authenticity of the footage or whether it portrayed the recent Russian strike in Khmelnytskyi.

Nevertheless, the scope of the blast—and its fiery aftermath—has reportedly prompted speculation online that the targeted facility housed Western-supplied munitions containing depleted uranium.

In March, the UK announced plans to provide Kyiv with depleted uranium shells for its Challenger 2 combat tanks, 14 of which have already been sent to Ukraine.

Due to their extremely high density, depleted uranium shells are able to penetrate heavy armor. But they can also pose health risks to humans, animals, and ecosystems in and around impact areas.

Following London’s announcement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned that the potential effects of munitions containing depleted uranium would be “impossible to control.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to “respond accordingly” if such munitions are employed on the battlefield.

According to Intel Slava Z, a pro-Moscow news aggregator, rumors have spread on Ukrainian social media that the recent explosion in Khmelnytskyi had led to the dispersal of depleted uranium particles.

In a Telegram post, it claimed that there were “already reports” that radiation levels had surged in the vicinity of the city.

The Epoch Times was unable to verify the assertions.

If the NATO arms depots that Russia is blowing up contain depleted uranium munitions as supplied by the UK those areas of Ukraine may become hotbeds for lung cancer and birth defects as the dust from those exploded DU munitions can contaminate large areas of land for decades.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) May 14, 2023

Allies Pledge More Arms to Kyiv

The strike in Khmelnytskyi coincided with a trip by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Berlin, where he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

It was Zelenskyy’s first visit to the German capital since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine—Moscow calls it a “special military operation”—early last year.

Shortly before the Ukrainian leader’s arrival, Germany unveiled a fresh $3 billion aid package for Kyiv—its single largest contribution to date.

On May 15, Zelenskyy visited London, where UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to provide Ukraine with additional long-range missiles and attack drones. Last week, the UK announced that it had delivered Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which boast a range of more than 150 miles.

Speaking to Sunak, Zelenskyy said his country’s ongoing conflict with Russia was a matter of “security” for Ukraine and “all of Europe.”

Satellite images of the result of the missile attack of the Russian Aerospace Forces on May 13 on the ammunition depot of the Armed Forces of Ukraine west of Khmelnitsky (before and after) pic.twitter.com/NPLCZhaI97

— Dagny Taggart (@DagnyTaggart963) May 15, 2023

Soon afterward, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the UK of “pumping weapons” into Ukraine.

“This won’t drastically change the course of the special military operation,” he said. “But it will definitely lead to further destruction.”

According to Sunak’s office, the UK prime minister plans to urge Kyiv’s other allies to step up support for Ukraine’s war effort at an upcoming meeting of G-7 leaders.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Over the weekend, we reported that the bottom finally appears to be falling from under the US consumer, where the high-end income household – which until recently had been propping up the broader deceleration in lower-income Americans – appears to have hit an income brick wall, leading to the first decline in wages in three years for those earning over $125,000…

… which in turn led to the first spending decline since February 2021: according to Bank of America’s latest debit and credit card data, total card spending per household was down 1.2% year-over-year (y/y) in April…

… and is only partially explained by the y/y drop in gas prices.

Does that mean that tomorrow’s retail sales report will be another disaster? Not just yet: according to BofA’s economists, tomorrow the census bureau’s retail sales report – the most important report of the week – will show a modest increase of 0.2% m/m in retail sales ex-autos and core control retail sales figures for April, both coming in just below expectations.

What is more concerning, is that what until recently was the strongest spending category, leisure services, appears to have peaked. According to BofA, on a m/m SA basis, online retail (card not present) and department stores saw the strongest growth, while airlines, furniture and lodging were the weakest categories.

We will get a better sense over the summer of whether the reopening tailwind to leisure services has run its course. Meanwhile, durable goods spending continues its relatively steady decline after peaking more than two years ago.

Spending weakness is usually the result of a decline in incomes, and this time is no different. According to BofA, weakness in tax refunds was likely a headwind to spending once again in April. The Internal Revenue Service reports that it issued $70.5 billion of Federal individual income tax refunds in April, compared to $85.3bn in April 2022. This shortfall of around $15bn amounts to 0.9% of monthly disposable income, and comes on the back of an even larger $25bn shortfall in March.

The next chart shows that the average number of refunds issued was close to 2022 levels at the end of April. However, the average refund size has been 8% smaller than it was last year. This suggests to BofA that total refunds are unlikely to catch up to 2022 levels as more returns are processed.

The silver lining is that BofA’s headline retail sales forecast of 0.7% is driven by the sharp pickup in auto sales in April: this should support total  consumer spending growth on the month. However, the BAC card data suggest that other spending categories look soft. As discussed above, services demand appears to be slowing. And if the bank’s retail sales forecast is correct, growth in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) retail sales ex-autos would be close to zero in April. Therefore, BofA continues to expect positive but weak GDP growth in 2Q 2023 and a mild recession thereafter.

Meanwhile, as the bank’s economists search for the key downward inflection point, it is monitoring the spending patterns of lower-income households, who would be most impacted by an economic shock. So far, lower-income HHs continue to outperform higher income HHs in terms of y/y spending growth…

… and they are still allocating a larger share of total card spending to discretionary items than they did in 2019.

Finally, BofA is also watching for signs of the impact of regional bank stress, but so far it finds that San Francisco and New York, the headquarters of the three failed domestic banks, outpaced the other major metros in terms of retail ex-auto spending in both March and April.

Much more in the full report available to pro subs in the usual place.

Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

An attorney has called on House Republicans to investigate and defund the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) efforts to prosecute defendants being treated as domestic terrorists for their presence at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the U.S. Capitol.

“This could go on for two or three more years unless House Speaker Kevin McCarthy takes the floor and declares that the DOJ is abusing legislation,” Carol Stewart, who represents several J6 defendants, told The Epoch Times.

Stewart said McCarthy can make a resolution and start an investigation into the abuse of U.S. criminal codes 1752, 231, and 1512, which relate to restricted buildings or grounds; civil disorders; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant, respectively. She said these laws are being misinterpreted to frame American citizens who protested at the Capitol building as culprits in a plot to overthrow the 2020 election through a violent insurrection.

The problem, Stewart argues, is that the story the DOJ, the FBI, and the mainstream media are telling “is a lie.”

One of her clients, 56-year-old Eric Christie, is charged with violating statute 1752, a misdemeanor that criminalizes the act of entering or remaining in “any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so.”

In addition, he’s alleged under subsection (b) of the law to have been brandishing “a dangerous weapon or firearm” on restricted grounds.

On Christie’s tool belt was a hammer that Stewart said was never removed, as it was part of a construction worker costume.

“He did not breach or push aside any barriers, assault police, participate in any violence, witness violence, encourage violence, enter the building, or do anything besides use protected First Amendment speech in a peaceful manner in a location that he believed was approved for speech,” Stewart wrote in her facts of the case.

Unaware of Restricted Area

Christie, an advocate for the Make America Great Again movement from California, believed he could “lawfully go forward” into an area he didn’t know was restricted, Stewart argued, because someone had removed a barricade of bike racks without his knowledge.

Though he never entered the Capitol, Christie was arrested at his apartment on Dec. 22, 2022—almost two years later—surrounded by a SWAT team of 20 to 30 people in a histrionic show of force, Stewart said.

According to Stewart, there was no knock, and Christie was never told he was under arrest, only that the officers wanted to search his apartment. When he asked for a search warrant, officials had to retrieve it, as they had not brought it with them.

His water and electricity had been turned off. A drone was sent into his home and determined that he had guns with the intent to use them.

Having arrived at 9 a.m., it took the officers until 10:45 a.m. to get the warrant. Instead of bringing it to him directly, they sent in a robot, which took 30 to 40 minutes of everyone watching it make its way downstairs.

The FBI had already rammed in the front door and broken the glass, thrown in flash-bangs and tear gas, and brought in a crisis negotiator, Stewart said, which led Christie to believe that they were there to abduct or kill him.

“Other people I’ve interviewed have examined this situation and agreed with Christie’s assessment,” Stewart said. “You don’t do all of that unless you’re going in. It’s not done, because you’re inviting danger if you do that.”

The fiasco was framed as a three-hour standoff, Stewart said.

“His delay in exiting his home had nothing to do with any falsely claimed ‘barricade,’” Stewart wrote in the court report. “It was due to shock, anxiety, the belief that the FBI wanted to murder him or take him to Guantanamo as a terrorist, and the failure of the FBI to have a search warrant on-site to present to him.”

Created Circumstances

At any point, however, the FBI could have gone to Christie’s attorney and asked to have Christie self-surrender.

Instead, Stewart said, the FBI engaged in tactics designed to elicit a reaction, not obtain facts.

A week before on Dec. 16, Christie had been pulled over by a state highway patrolman.

“Understand the bizarre nature of this,” Stewart said. “The FBI has the California Highway Patrol (CHP) pull him over just to create the circumstances for a person with anxiety.”

In the time between Jan. 6 and his arrest at his apartment, every nook and cranny of Christie’s life was investigated using avenues opened by the Patriot Act, which would not only include a forensic investigation into his online profile but also into his medical history, Stewart said.

It’s the kind of information that can be weaponized in a psychological operation, Stewart said.

Later, in court, Stewart said the FBI admitted to using the state law enforcement pretextually.

Under California law, an officer has the right to ask someone to get out of their car. However, with Christie, there was no traffic violation. The officer yelled at Christie, telling him that if he didn’t get out of the car, he would break his window.

In a panic, Christie fled, Stewart said, aware of what was happening with other J6 defendants.

It was agreed that he wouldn’t be pursued, Stewart said, so he went about his life until the day of his arrest.

The CHP alleged that the officer pulled Christie over because the officer saw Christie rolling through a stop sign, which Stewart said is not true.

“The dash cam footage shows that this is false,” Stewart said. “They didn’t even have him in sight. They left out the threat to break his window. They said he fled arrest. For what? The CHP filed a false report and not once said they were operating in coordination with the FBI. So, there’s some dirty dealing going on at that level between the guys in that unit and the local FBI agents.”

Then there is the probability that the FBI had been entering Christie’s condominium for several months, as there was a mock-up made of his apartment, Stewart said.

“This is the kind of stuff they’re doing,” Stewart said. “I’ve worked with special forces a lot. They don’t build mock-ups for a normal arrest. For all the people we went and grabbed in Afghanistan, they didn’t build mock-ups.”

‘I Know What a Setup Looks Like’

Stewart’s seen these strategies before during her time working in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency while serving 25 years of active duty with the U.S. Army, retiring as a colonel.

Stewart’s counterterrorism work dates to 1993. She served as an intelligence battalion commander in Bosnia from 1998 to 1999 and continued to work in military intelligence in Kosovo from 2001 to 2002 and at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2002 to 2005.

Stewart spent six and a half years working as a senior intelligence officer with the Department of Defense at CENTCOM with strategic assessments related to terrorism, insurgency, and regional issues; targeting; and special projects that included terrorism, counterintelligence, and insider threats.

Considering her work in military intelligence, Stewart said the tactical operations used on Christie and other J6 defendants are strikingly familiar.

“This is how the military in Iraq organized for urban warfare to go in and clear houses,” she said. “This isn’t much different. I know what a setup looks like.”

Before the engagement even takes place, the FBI creates a “baseball card” on the suspects, which is a dossier developed for targeting terrorists.

“This is for kill or capture missions, so I want that to set in for a minute,” Stewart said. “The whole concept of a baseball card for overseas terrorism was based on creating a targeting package to go on kill or capture missions. This has now been transported back into the United States to go after American citizens.”

Read more here…

Last week when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna, following a prior canceled meeting due to the spy balloon shootdown drama of early February which set off a firestorm of angry accusations between Beijing and Washington, the US side reportedly voiced concerns over American citizens held in Chinese prisons.

On Monday a Chinese court “answered” Washington’s complaints over detained Americans, sentencing a 78-year-old US citizen to life in prison for alleged spying. 

Little is known of the American, John Shing-Wan Leung, who holds permanent residency in Hong Kong. China’s counterintelligence agency arrested him on April 15, 2021 in the southeastern city of Suzhou.

His plight was made worse in terms of the prospect of US consular contact or representation given the detention had happened at a moment China was under strict Covid-19 lockdown, with borders closed.

Leung had a lengthy pre-trial detention, which is not uncommon for cases involving charges of espionage. But the details of what precisely the Chinese state is alleging have not emerged. CNN reviews based on scant government and court statements–

The court also confiscated personal property worth 500,000 yuan ($71,797), the statement added.

Chinese authorities and state media have not previously disclosed any information on Leung’s detention or the court process that led to his conviction. Cases involving state security are usually strictly handled behind closed doors, where the judicial system has a conviction rate of around 99%, according to legal observers.

And the US Embassy in Beijing had nothing to say other than it was “aware” of reports of the life sentence. “The Department of State has no greater priority than the safety and security of US citizens overseas. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment,” a statement said.

As NBC notes, the worsened US-China relations of late have led to a climate of fear for foreign and Western firms operating in China: 

Chinese national security agencies have also raided the offices of foreign business consulting firms in Beijing and other cities as part of an ongoing crackdown on foreign businesses that provide sensitive economic data.

Foreign companies operating in China have come under increasing pressure as Xi Jinping’s government tightens control over the economy. That stands in stark contrast to efforts to lure back foreign investors after draconian Covid-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted at the beginning of the year.

A number of foreigners, including from Japan and Canada, have recently been detained by Chinese authorities related to suspicion of spying. Chinese law also looks to only get more draconian, given last month already sweeping counter-espionage laws were expanded further. Likely more Westerners will eventually fall under this crackdown dragnet as the pressure ratchets. 

Authored by Jan Jekielek and Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

America’s intellectual class has been given so much power by the public that their misuse of such power is threatening the fundamental freedom of speech in the country, says scholar and author Tom Harrington.

“It’s absolutely remarkable how easily we’ve gone from free speech to asking, ‘How can I make my way around the censorship that’s here?’” Harrington said in a recent interview with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders” that premiered on May 11.

“Sometimes, there’s this idea that reality just is. That’s partially true but in the cultural realm, there’s always someone developing it and distributing it who has more access to power.

“Those people generally are well-educated people who we hold up as exemplars of knowledge. They have a lot of power and they are deferred to quite readily.”

Harrington warned that people are delivering a lot of their power into the hands of “experts” who tend to have a “flipness” with which they have used such power.

“Worse than flipness, there seems to be almost a perversion and a joy in making us obey and be compliant for compliance’s sake. This is very troubling in a society.

“You need the intellectual class or the credentialed class to have the reality of their status back up the title of their status. It seems to me these two things have separated in these last few years, and that’s really troubling to me.”

Harrington pointed out that censorship and cancellation are “two cudgels” used against the public.

“We’re beginning to see that a lot of this hooting down is not as spontaneous as many of us would like to believe. With the recent ‘Twitter Files,’ and the case that the attorney generals of Missouri and Louisiana are trying now, we’re finding out that this was anything but spontaneous. There were a number of government actors working in concert with private actors to achieve a censorship that, frankly, for those of us of a certain age, is unimaginable.”

On March 17, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi released a version of the so-called “Twitter Files” exposing the alleged collusion between Twitter and Stanford University’s Virality Project (VP) to censor what they deemed to be misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. VP is also found to have colluded with the U.S. government.

“Though the Virality Project reviewed content on a mass scale for Twitter, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Medium, TikTok, and Pinterest, it knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself,” Taibbi stated on Twitter.

The initiative “accelerated the evolution of digital censorship, moving it from judging truth/untruth to a new, scarier model, openly focused on political narrative at the expense of fact.”

Reliance on Experts

Harrington, who is a Hispanic studies emeritus professor, pointed out that true experts do not impose their reality on anyone. Experts must be able to keep their ego impulses in check and ensure that they are using their power to help the people. “It seems that that line has been crossed,” he said.

“There’s a lot of ego gratification that is interfering with what should be a real sober taking of responsibility for a gift of power,” he said about the nature of today’s experts.“Power is a gift in a democratic society. It’s not something you own, and it’s not something there to make people obey you. It’s a gift you have that hopefully you can use in constructive ways that preserve the dignity of those who don’t have as much power as you do.”

Has the race-swapping fad within Hollywood finally hit a brick wall?  Are they going to try to depict historic figures as they really looked once again, or will they double down?  What is the real purpose behind this trend that many people are now referring to as “black washing?” 

The political left often views history as inconvenient to their narrative, which is that different societies and ethnic groups should be homogenized into a single global entity, ostensibly with the same progressive ideology as they have.  However, until the past century this has not been the case.  Humanity remains discerning always, and seeks to group into tribes whenever possible.  

Leftists believe that they can rewrite several thousand years of recorded history through Hollywood magic and con the next generation into thinking “diversity and inclusion” have always been a thing.  In fact, it is nearly impossible to get a streaming show or movie produced these days without filmmakers being forced to follow a list of ESG requirements and a perfect pie chart of on-screen representation, even when the places depicted were historically of only one race.  And, dare we say that it was Netflix that initially pioneered this woke entertainment trend.

Now it appears that their failure has come full circle with a series about Cleopatra VII executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith (wife of the slap-happy Will Smith).  The show, which is part of a project to showcase black girl-bosses through history, is billed as a serious docudrama but the depictions of Cleopatra as black are completely inaccurate.  The public response has not been positive.

Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra hit 1% on the Rotten Tomatoes rating website, a historic low for streaming television.

Attempts to paint the Egyptians as Sub-Saharan African in recent years tie into a conspiracy theory among leftist activists who believe that Egypt was actually an ancient black empire that historians have sought to maliciously “white wash.”  In reality, genetic testing shows that ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.  

Cleopatra was Greek/Macedonian, not sub-Saharan African, and there is no serious debate over this in the historic community.  Multiple images of Cleopatra from the 1st Century AD have been found, including frescos which depict Cleopatra as white.

Why not make a television series about actual black ruled kingdoms in Africa, such as the kingdom of Kush (neighbors to the Egyptians in today’s Northern Sudan), or the Mali Empire?  Probably because these groups have a limited impact on the annals of world history and that’s not enough for woke Hollywood.  They want Wakanda.  They want Egypt to be their Wakanda, but it simply isn’t so.  

Why does it matter if a black actress plays Cleopatra?  Because facts matter.  While Hollywood has many times taken liberties with history in past films and shows, the goal should be to improve that pattern and strive for accuracy instead of going backwards.  And, ultimately it matters because these kinds of woke productions are propaganda driven.  These are not changes to history made with the intention to spice things up for audiences; no, these are changes specifically designed to lie to the public and condition them to believe things that are not true.

Black actors are not the problem.  Leftist propaganda is the problem.      

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

“[A] crash is coming, and it may be terrific… The vicious circle will get in full swing and the result will be a serious business depression. There may be a stampede for selling which will exceed anything that the Stock Exchange has ever witnessed. Wise are those investors who now get out of debt.”

The above words could easily have been stated by me or another of the (very) few others who currently predict the coming of crashes in the markets.

But they were not.

The statements above were made by investor Roger Babson at a speech at the Annual Business Conference in Massachusetts on 5th September, 1929.

Mr. Babson’s prediction was not a sudden one. In fact, he had been making the same prediction for the previous two years, although he, in September of 1929, felt the crash was much closer.

News of his speech reached Wall Street by mid-afternoon, causing the market to retreat about 3%. The sudden decline was named the “Babson Break.”

The reaction from business insiders was immediate. Rather than respond by saying, “Thanks for the warning—we’ll proceed cautiously,” Wall Street vilified him. The Chicago Tribune published numerous rebuffs from a host of economists and Wall Street leaders. Even Mr. Babson’s patriotism was taken into question for making so rash a projection. Noted economist Professor Irving Fisher stated emphatically, “There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.” He and many others repeatedly soothed investors, advising them that a resumption in the boom was imminent. Financier Bernard Baruch famously cabled Winston Churchill, “Financial storm definitely passed.” Even President Herbert Hoover assured Americans that the market was sound.

But, 55 days after Mr. Babson’s speech, on 29th October, 1929, the market suddenly went into a free-fall, dropping 12% in its first day.

Today, most people have the general impression that on Black Friday, the market crashed and almost immediately, there were breadlines. Not so. In the Great Depression, as in any depression, the market collapsed in stages. The market did not reach its bottom of 89% losses until July of 1932.

Along the way, thousands of banks and lending institutions went belly-up. Thirteen million jobs disappeared.

And of course, the political leaders of the day did their bit. They implemented knee-jerk “solutions” that actually worsened the situation. Restrictive tariffs, gold confiscation, and a more dominant government were employed, just as they will be this time around.

So, as the market tumbled, we would imagine that Babson came to be praised by Wall Street for his insight, but in fact, the opposite occurred. Having accused him of being utterly incorrect in September, they later accused him of having caused the depression.

So, was Babson’s prediction a lucky guess? Did he simply observe the bull market and arbitrarily predict the opposite of the trend of the day to see what would happen? Not at all.

Such predictions are not guesswork, nor are they attributable to a vision seen in some crystal ball. Such crashes are entirely predictable. When any major bull market becomes overbought; when too many investors begin buying on margin because they can’t come up with the purchase price for stocks; when they then become even more obsessive and borrow money to buy on margin, the market has become a house of cards, waiting for the slightest breeze to come along.

So what do we take away from this? First, we can be certain that as the present-day house of cards begins to shake, there will be no warnings from Wall Street. In fact, quite the opposite. Their bread gets buttered by buyers. They will be adamant (and even, in many cases, truly believe) that the sky is the limit and investors should buy, buy, buy, as there are fortunes to be made by doing so. And investors, watching the rise, will fall all over each other, just as in 1929, buying with both hands.

This time around, the crash and its byproducts will be more extreme than in 1929, as the bubble itself is more extreme.

And Wall Street can count on television and a media that has a vested interest in keeping the charade going as long as possible. It will also be more extreme, as the governments of much of the world are now broke and can only worsen their respective economies through the customary “solutions” that governments always employ—tariffs, confiscations, greater government control, etc.

Finally, the aftermath will be more extreme, as—unlike in 1929, when most people actually believed in the government—this time around, there will be dramatic unrest.

Just as in 1929, those who are declaring that “the Emperor has no clothes” are few in number, and their viewpoint is most certainly not put forth in the conventional media. For this reason, it’s understandable that the great majority of people invariably ignore the Babsons of the world as Chicken Littles and blithely charge toward the cliff like lemmings.

Those who do think independently and become convinced that history is repeating itself are focusing their attention on finding a way out of being a casualty in the train wreck that’s coming. This is difficult to do, as invariably, the closer the event becomes, the more difficult it is to swim against the tide. For this reason, even many who conclude that the end is near often fail to act to save themselves and their families.

Internationalisation is both time-consuming and costly. Additionally, it’s lonely, as it’s considered foolish and unnecessary by more than 99% of the population.

The great temptation is to decide, “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe I can live with it.” And in fact, for most people, this will be the prevailing view—that although their personal situation will be diminished in many ways, the crashes will be tolerable.

The question is whether we wish to make the pre-emptive effort to create a life that is far better than tolerable, and possibly even improved, whist the opportunity for doing so still exists.

*  *  *

It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West. That’s precisely why legendary speculator Doug Casey and his team just released this free report, which shows you exactly what’s happening and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.

Today marks 45 days after the end of the first quarter, also known as the day when Q1 13-F season begins (and ends) and while we will have a comprehensive summary of what hedge funds did in the first quarter (which, again, ended 45 days ago and in a world where the average holding period is a few minutes, is largely meaningless by now) we start our reporting with the grand daddy of all modern day taxpayer-backed hedge funds, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

Which actually was not that much: the reported value of Berkshire’s long-only equity portfolio rose by 8.7% from $299BN to $325BN, largely thanks to stock price appreciation because as we previously noted, in Q1 Buffett “harvested” (read sold) his positions for the second quarter running, dumping a net $10.4BN in stocks (against $2.9 billion in purchases), a modest slowdown from the $15BN net he sold in Q4 (both of which are a small fraction of his portfolio of ~$300BN).

With that in mind, here are the most notable changes in Q1: one quarter after Berkshire neither added new position nor fully liquidated holdings in the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first time in years, in Q1 Berkshire both added several new positions and fully liquidated several others.

Three new buys:

• Capital One: bought 9.92 million shares valued at $954.1 million, representing 2.6% of shares outstanding
• Diageo Plc-ADR: bought 227,750 shares valued at $41.3 million
• Vitesse Energy: bought 51,026 shares valued at just $1 million, in what may have been a fat finger purchase as it is completely meaningless for a firm the size of Berkshire

Four exits:

• BNY Mellon: 25.1 million shares liquidated, valued at $1.14 billion as of Dec. 31, 2022
• US Bancorp: 6.67 million valued at $290.9 million
• RH: 2.36 million shares liquidated, valued at $630.6 million
• Taiwan Semiconductor: 8.29 million shares liquidated  valued at $617.7 million

The market promptly responded to the changes in the portfolio, sending two banks’ shares in opposite directions Monday afternoon: Capital One Financial shares rallied more than 5% in after-hours trading while Bank of New York Mellon sold off in the extended session Monday after Berkshire bought the former and liquidated the latter.

At Berkshire’s annual meeting, Buffett weighed in on recent scares for regional banks: “In terms of owning banks, events will determine their future and you’ve got politicians involved, you’ve got a whole lot of people who don’t really understand how the system works.” Apparently, when it comes to recently hobbled bank names such as USB and BNY, neither did Buffett.

Elsewhere, RH shares fell 3% after Berkshire disclosed liquidating his entire 2.4 million share stake. Berkshire also officially reported selling of its 8.3 million stake in Taiwan Semiconductor.

Added to five positions:

• Apple (which remains the fund’s largest position worth just over $150BN as of March 31), by 20.4 million shares, or 2.3%, and BRK now holds 915.6 million AAPL shares, or 5.8% of the outstanding total.
• Occidental Petroleum: added 17.4 million shares, or 8.9%, bringing total to 211.7 million shares valued at $13.2 billion, representing 24% of total outstanding shares
• HP Inc: added 16.5 million shares, or 15.8%, bringing total to 121 million shares valued at $3.6 billion, representing 12% of total outstanding shares
• Paramount: added 93,784 shares, or 0.1%, bringing total to 93.7 million shares valued at $2.1 billion, and representing 15% of total outstanding shares
• Markel: added 4,050 shares, or 0.9%, bringing total to 472 million shares valued at $603 million.

While the 13F indicated additions to Berkshire’s positions in Bank of America and Citi, the conglomerate clarified that those positions are not actual additions but are inherited from Gen Re: “beginning with the Form 13F to be filed later today, the holdings of Gen Re will be included in Berkshire’s 13F filing,” Berkshire said in a news release earlier Monday. “The NEAM Form 13F filings will no longer include Gen Re’s holdings but they will continue to include NEAM client holdings where NEAM is acting as an investment manager.” Other holdings affected by that change included Apple and Chevron Berkshire said in its news release.

Trimmed holdings in eight positions, including:

• Chevron: reduced by 30.6 million shares or 18.8%, to 132.4 million shares valued at $21.6 billion, and representing 6.9% of shares outstanding
• Activision Blizzard: reduced stake by 3.3 million shares or 6.2%, to 49.4 million shares valued at $4.2 billion
• General Motors: reduced by 10 million shares (to the dot) or 20%, to 40 million shares valued at $1.5 billion, and representing 2.9% of shares outstanding
• Celanese: reduced by 891,167 shares or 9.2%, to 8.8 million shares valued at $960 million, and representing 8% of shares outstanding
• Ally Financial: reduced by 800,000 shares or 2.7%, to 29 million shares valued at $739.2 million, and representing 9.6% of shares outstanding
• McKesson: reduced by 565,650 shares or 19.8%, to 2.29 million shares valued at $815 million, and representing 1.7% of shares outstanding
• Aon Plc, Amazon

Top holdings:

• Apple: up 20.4 million shares, to 915.6 million valued at $151 billion, representing 5.8% of shares outstanding
• Bank of America: up 22.8 million, to 1.03 billion valued at $29.5 billion, representing 13% of shares outstanding
• American Express: unchanged at 151.6 million valued at $25 billion
• Coca-Cola: unchanged at 400 million valued at $24.8 billion
• Chevron: down 30.6 million, to 132.4 million valued at $21.6 billion, representing 6.9% of shares outstanding

Of course, by now readers know but we will remind them anyway, the holdings reported here exclude derivatives and total values may include debt securities. The equities listed may not reflect current holdings. New holdings and exits may be caused by updated disclosure requirements rather than investment changes.

Full details of all Berkshire Q4 moves can be found in the table below.

Soruce: SEC Edgar

A convention of Democrat city council candidates devolved into utter chaos on Saturday, prompting a police and ambulance response and the session to be shut down without finishing its business. 

The convention was being held by the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, which — in something of an historical quirk — is the official name of Minnesota’s affiliate of the national Democratic Party.

The trouble began when incumbent Council Member Aisha Chughtai took the stage to deliver her 10-minute candidate presentation. To provide an impressive backdrop, the Chughtai campaign asked supporters to take the stage and stand behind her as she spoke. 

That triggered backers backers of Chughtai’s challenger, Nasri Warsame — despite the fact that Warsame was randomly picked to speak second, and could have ventured to match Chughtai’s visuals by inviting a similar display. 

Instead, supporters of Somalia-born Warsame surrendered to violent impulses, and reportedly initiated physical violence that included shoving, punches and the hurling of objects. Many of them took to the stage themselves, yelling, waving “Nasri” signs and pounding on tables. 

Recounting her feelings as she looked from the stage onto the melee before her, Chughtai supporter Bridget Siljander told Associated Press, “I was scared some of us might die.”

Briana Rose Lee, a fluorescent pink-haired theater arts grad and chair of the Minneapolis chapter of the party, tweeted that “several DFL volunteers were assaulted, including four members of the State Executive Committee…I don’t know the next steps yet. But there will be repurcussions.”  

A ward 10 delegate sent me another angle of the scrum in front of the stage. Shows @NotoriousDGP from the Chughtai campaign standing there, not engaging, as Warsame supporter shoves him.

Full video: https://t.co/QRyYhm5GdO pic.twitter.com/pGiCiKDCWl

— Wedge LIVE!™ (@WedgeLIVE) May 14, 2023

As the unrest continued, indignant convention chair Sam Doten shouted condemnation through the PA system: “This is embarrassing!” Quickly concluding there was little hope of restoring order, Doten yelled, “We are shutting this down! This is no longer safe!” before hammering a table with his gavel. 

Police cars and ambulances raced to the convention. At least one person was taken to a hospital and another was treated at the scene. Fittingly for an eruption of Democrat-initiated violence, no arrests were made. 

Democrats’ beloved multicultural diversity factored into the fracas, particularly in regard to Somali supporters of Warsame. One of his backers told the Minneapolis StarTribune that Warsame supporters were already agitated over what they perceived to be poor translations and unfair handling of the proceedings.

Another part of the story from yesterday that we should talk about is that the 1st interpreter hired was harrassed & had his family threatened by Nasris supporters, so another interpreter took his place. It’s important you know the full scope of intimidation tactics. Shameful.

— Briana Rose Lee 🌹☮ (@BrianaRoseLee) May 15, 2023

Some may have misconstrued the mass gathering on stage as a premature declaration of victory for  Chughtai, a daughter of Pakistani immigrants and a self-avowed socialist. Chughtai was elected at the age of 24, making her the city’s youngest-ever member of city council, and its first Muslim. 

In the aftermath, both candidates exchanged accusations via social media. Hilariously looking to maximize intersectionality-victimhood credits, Chughtai said Warsame supporters “punched multiple women of color” and “shoved and harassed LGBTQIA2S+ delegates and supporters.” 

Warsame accused DFL staff of “resort[ing] to corrupt practices in an attempt to cheat the democratic process. This included the involvement of Ilhan Omar’s staff and Keith Ellison’s son, adding to the turmoil and conflict…It is our hope that the DFL staff will take responsibility for their actions and work towards rectifying the damage caused by their misconduct.” 

Just visited one of my delegates in hospital, wish her quick recovery!

Violence & unfairness have no place in democracy!! pic.twitter.com/7C44LaY3vw

— Nasri Warsame (@Nasriforward10) May 14, 2023

State party chairman Ken Martin, however, firmly pinned the blame on the Warsame camp: 

“It is clear that the conflict was instigated by supporters of city council candidate Nasri Warsame. Harassment and violence are unacceptable, and we expect candidates and their campaign teams to work hard to curb such behavior when it comes from their supporters, staffers, or volunteers. 

Warsame and his team took the opposite approach at today’s convention by escalating the situation and encouraging conflict. Reprehensible behavior like this from any DFL Party candidate and campaign will not be tolerated.”

Separately, Martin said he will convene an emergency meeting this week to consider banning from the party people who were at fault on Saturday.   

In a Sunday statement, Warsame reiterated his accusations of DFL mismanagement and said accusations by DFL and Chughtai that Warsame’s campaign promoted the violence “are defamatory, slander and libel.”

At the same time, Warsame apologized and condemned the violence, saying “the purpose of my entire platform is supporting public safety and ensuring that the constituents in Ward 10 are safe from the violence of rampant car thefts and assaults in our community.”

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Justice (DOJ) last week secured a court order to block former President Donald Trump from a deposition appearance in connection with lawsuits filed by former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

“The deposition of former President Donald Trump is hereby stayed until the deposition of [F.B.I. Director] Christopher Wray and any ensuing motion practice as to the remaining necessity of the former president’s deposition have been completed,” the order reads in part. It was issued by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Thursday, May 11.

Strzok and Page were central figures in the controversy around the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation that had probed whether Trump had ties with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. Text messages between the two agents showed the two making highly critical comments about Trump and his supporters as the two were working on that investigation.

Previously, Jackson had ruled that Wray and Trump could be deposed in connection to the lawsuits, according to court documents. U.S. DOJ lawyers had argued that Wray should be deposed first because he was ranked lower than Trump and that any information that he provided in the suit could mean that Trump would not have to testify.

“The Court is somewhat surprised to learn that since then, the parties have done nothing more than wrangle over the order of the two depositions,” Berman Jackson wrote. “The government seems chagrined that the Court did not order that the deposition of the FBI Director be completed first, but it may recall that it was the Court’s view that it was Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official in the group of proposed deponents, whose ongoing essential duties fell most squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question.”

Berman Jackson, a senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

And in her order, Berman Jackson made reference to her February ruling that Trump and Wray could be deposed for two hours and limited questions to a “narrow set of topics” in connection to the lawsuits. Page and Strzok filed their complaints against the FBI and DOJ in 2019; Page’s lawsuit alleges her privacy was violated, while Strzok had contended that he was wrongfully terminated by the FBI.

In defending her earlier ruling, the judge wrote that it “was appropriate in light of all of the facts, including the former President’s own public statements concerning his role in the firing of the plaintiff,” according to court documents.

Trump repeatedly said that Strzok and Page were treating him unfairly during the FBI probe and often pointed to negative comments they said about him. After announcing his campaign for president last year, Trump made a 2024 campaign promise to clean out the “deep state,” a term used to describe entrenched federal bureaucrats who he said tried to block him while he was in office.

Ultimately, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe essentially concluded that Trump did not collude with the Russian government to get elected. However, there were numerous unfounded claims about Trump that were aired on corporate media outlets that came from what appeared to be anonymous sources within the FBI and DOJ.

Read more here…